A Thousand Sisters_ My Journey Into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman - Lisa Shannon [76]
I spot D just outside of Zanzibar customs. My first thought: We glean so much about a person, albeit superficial things, through contextual clues—mutual friends, reputation, style choices in things like food, clothing, and home decor. He and I have zero context. The odds are high for us to stumble upon some deal-breaking fact and end up curled on opposite ends of the bed by tomorrow night.
He kisses me. I’m not sure what I find more awkward: the fact we know almost nothing about each other; my attempt to avoid eye contact, afraid he’ll sense the fresh-out-of-Congo nerves; or a public display of affection in a Muslim country.
The taxi ride to the resort is long and meandering. It’s late, close to eleven, and the cab driver doesn’t seem to know where he is going. We pull over at a quiet crossroads and the driver leaves us to ask for directions at a local shop. With only a dim street lamp lighting the empty road, I engage D in a rush of fill-in-the-blank questions about family, work, and his background, all the while scanning the bushes, watching for movement. The paranoia has apparently followed me out of Congo like a stray dog. I remind myself: There are no militias in Zanzibar. No armed men lurking behind those bushes. No one is going to take us out on this abandoned road. My heart pounds anyway.
Entering his room is surreal. With Congo only a short hop behind me, here I am with a stranger in a modern, five-star palace where luxury oozes out of the walls. I look down at my feet and realize I’m still caked in road dust from Congo. It’s sorely out of place here against the modern all-white decor. I’m exhausted from the mental combat I’ve been engaged in all day, all month, or much longer. I’m through with declarations about what kind of woman I am. I want Congo off of me, even if I can only shake it for a little while. I see D, who’s standing across the palatial bathroom, as an escape route—or even just a temporary anesthetic. We’re already warm from snuggling during the rest of our taxi ride, and there will be no tour now. It’s straight for the bed—pushing aside the mosquito net and onto the six-hundred-thread cotton sheets.
It is not the first time I’ve been touched since Ted left, and I’ve already found that being with a new lover can prove far less soothing than expected. But this is something I have not felt in more years than I can count. There is no space for another thought or emotion. We take refuge in each other like we mean it.
I haven’t slept in days. I still can’t sleep. D asks if I’m having a hard time getting the stories and images of Congo out of my head.
I skirt the question and lie, “It’s just the new environment.”
While he sleeps, I stir over half-formed thoughts, recycling images of young men dousing huts with gasoline, straw catching flame, people screaming. As my thoughts inch towards lucidity, the title of a poem drifts to the foreground. I read it in high school; it was assigned in freshman English, in preparation for the visit from prominent American writer Yusef Komunyakaa, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Though I haven’t thought of the poem in almost twenty years, I remember it because I was confused by the title.
Later, I will look up the poem.
YOU AND I ARE DISAPPEARING
The cry I bring down from the hills
belongs to a girl still burning
inside my head. At daybreak
she burns like a piece of paper.
She burns like foxfire
in a thigh-shaped valley.
A skirt of flames
dances around her
at dusk.
We stand with our hands
hanging at our sides,
while she burns
like a sack of dry ice.
She burns like oil on water.
She burns like a cattail torch
dipped in gasoline.
She glows like the fat tip
of a banker’s cigar,
silent as quicksilver.
A tiger under a rainbow
at nightfall.
She burns like a shot glass of vodka.
She burns like a field of